Tag: LOUISVILLE

As you may have gathered from my last post, we really enjoyed Nashville. But we had a bourbon tour a-waiting for us in Louisville, Kentucky, so at 7am on Saturday morning, we jumped in the car and headed towards Louisville to meet our tour with a half hour to spare.

Or so we thought.

When we plugged the address into our trusty iPhone maps we were horrified to find it put our arrival time at half an hour after we needed to be there. There was a one-hour time difference between Nashville and Louisville. This was disastrous. Louisville was our last stop and the sole purpose of our one-day stay there was to hit the Bourbon Trail.

Now, before you go judging our travel naivety, please let me just show you a map of the drive from Nashville to Louisville and then you decide whether you would have thought to check for time differences. Go on. Be honest.

Anyway, we spent the two and a half hour trip on the phone with the tour company trying to work out how we might be able to meet up with the group, without leaving our car stranded at some boutique, craft distillery in the middle of Nowhereville, Kentucky.

In the end, it was determined that we could make it to the first stop in time to meet up with the group, so Hoff made the chivalrous gesture of dropping me there, and forgoing the rest of the tour so he could take the car back to Louisville and pick me up later. Whattaguy.

The ensuing bourbon experience was lovely, albeit a little lonely. And needless to say, the whole race to get there, and Hoff missing out, put a bit of a dampener on our day, especially after we had such a brilliant time in Nashville.

Maker’s Mark Distillery Grounds

Which unfortunately also put me in a bit of a broody mood on the whole, but particularly vis a vis, our children. Or more specifically, our separation from them.

The monkeys are only 3 and 5 so a two-week parting was always going to be a bit of a gamble. On both sides. Aside from the obvious, my fear was missing them too much and essentially ruining a good holiday with bad, moping moods.

And for their part, we left them with Hoff’s parents who live about 300m from the ocean, and they have a pool, and they have a thing called ‘second breakfast’. So there was a good chance they wouldn’t notice we were gone at all. But, you never know.

Mudjimba Beach

Add into the mix that by Louisville we were well and truly on the home stretch of our trip and, well, it was a tricky day, emotionally-speaking.

I don’t think it was any coincidence that the one full day I spent apart from Hoff was also the one day I struggled most being away from the kidlets. As it turned out, all of us – both the kids and I – were pretty much fine throughout our holiday apart from each other.

We chatted to them on FaceTime every day, which as anyone with preschoolers will know, is tricky. Despite the fact that increased screen time seems to be the ultimate goal of my five year old most days, FaceTime with his wayward parents didn’t quite seem to fit the bill.

Also embarrassingly, every time we had to FaceTime them in public, within earshot of Americans, they had this odd habit of coming out with the weirdest things, such as “Hey Mum, guess what, Grandma hasn’t checked the mail for three days because there’s a frog living in the letterbox!” Doing nothing for the Australian stereotype on the whole.

On this day though, I realised for me that any anxiety I had around being apart from the kids was probably being offset by the absolute pleasure I took from being in Hoff’s company for an extended amount of time; in reconnecting a little bit. It was the best. We had great conversations – finished them even, we shared new experiences and dissected them later, we had moments of doing our own thing and we had long periods of sitting together in silence, scrolling on our phones or reading, and taking absolute joy in the fact that would to do that, together. There was no work, no phone calls, no housework, no My Little Pony, no Hot Wheels, no cooking – at this point I’m legitimately unsure as to where my cutlery draw is located.

The point is, I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to whether I’d do it again – leave the kids for this long. And I think the answer is, yes, absolutely I would. But not for a long time. It has been a dream, a refresher and a bit of a CTRL – ALT – DELTE on our lives, which had become a little stressful of late. But because it has been so wonderful, at this point, I don’t feel the need to do it again any time soon. It really has felt like such a privilege and I really believe this will carry me through for a good long time.

That said, I can absolutely also see myself being back around my children for about 23 minutes before I surreptitiously begin Googling airfares and hotel deals.

The three-year-old fancies herself as a bit of a comedian, highlights of which include “Why did the cat and the dog climb the tree? Because they got hit by a car.”

And when we ask the five-year-old about his day, he generally recounts the plot of the latest animated garbage he watched on telly. Despite the fact that the other 12 waking hours of his day were probably filled with activities specifically design to plant magical childhood memories in his brain.

Following the tour, I felt instantly better once being reunited with Hoff. I resolved to enjoy my last night in Louisville, and the last night of our holiday. It was filled with more bourbon and fried chicken (Kentucky-style), and of course lots of lovely, lovely reflecting on how very lucky we’ve been.